The Animals
House of the Rising Sun chords
House of the Rising Sun by The Animals is an intermediate song in Am, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 6 chords (Am, C, D, F, E, Dm) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse → Coda. 5 of the 6 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: D → F, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape F
- Key
- Amwith no capo
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 65 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in House of the Rising Sun
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
Intro♩=90
Verse♩=90
Coda♩=90
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play House of the Rising Sun
One progression, six chords, and a rolling arpeggio pattern that has launched a million first fingerpicking attempts. The loop is Am, C, D and F, then Am, E and Am and E again, played in a slow six-eight feel. Because it never changes, the song is a perfect study in two things at once: keeping the picking hand independent, and making the F chord arrive without a pause in the pattern. Learn the shape changes first with plain strums, then add the arpeggio.
The picking pattern is thumb on the bass note, then index, middle and ring on the top three strings, rolling upwards and back down. Am, C and F share so many notes that the left hand barely moves: from Am (x02210) to C (x32010) only the ring finger moves, and from C to D you can keep a finger anchored on the G string at fret 2. The F is the one demanding moment — use the small four-string F (xx3211) if the full barre is not ready, because the bass player and the opening low note are covering the root anyway.
Practise at 60 BPM with six light pulses per bar and count out loud, because a six-eight song played as a straight four loses all its menace. Loop Am, C, D, F until the F lands on time, then add the Am, E turnaround and finally the coda, where the Am slides to Dm and back. Try the whole thing at half speed with the metronome before you attempt the record’s tempo.
How to practise House of the Rising Sun
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → E (0-2-2-1-0-0, beginner) → Dm (x-x-0-2-3-1, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
5 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
Am → C4×Am → E4×C → D3×D → F3×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Amevery section
- CIntro, Verse
- DIntro, Verse
- FIntro, Verse
- EIntro, Verse
- DmCoda
Climb the tempo ladder
This sheet does not list a tempo, so pick one where every change is clean and use the metronome to move up in 4 BPM steps.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing House of the Rising Sun with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capoas written
Am C D F E Dm
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
Abm B C# E Eb C#m
1 of 6 stay open
Fret 2
Gm Bb C Eb D Cm
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
F#m A B D C# Bm
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 4
Fm Ab Bb C# C Bbm
1 of 6 stay open
Fret 5
Em G A C B Am
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
Ebm F# Ab B Bb Abm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
Dm F G Bb A Gm
3 of 6 stay open
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If House of the Rising Sun clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: Hotel California, Hey Jude, Wish You Were Here, The Weight.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in House of the Rising Sun turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
64bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by Eadd9, 6×.
16bars of this chord across the songbook
6songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 4×.